Tag Archives: David Koch Charitable Foundation

“Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work within the system.” (Rules for Radicals)

It is impossible to cover all the groups funded by Richard Mellon Scaife over a period of the last 50 years. So I’ve chosen only those organizations most people are familiar with, and those who are more prominent because of their donor’s largess.

Newsmax

The NewsMax.com website launched on September 16, 1998, with Christopher Ruddy serving as columnist and editor-in-chief. NewsMax’s founders include Kevin Timpy, Bruce Lonic, Lord William Rees-Mogg, National Taxpayer’s Union founder, James Dale Davidson, who for decades has promoted a Constitutional Convention, Admiral Thomas Moorer, Arnaud de Borchgrave, CFR member and Sun Myung Moon employee (deceased), and Michael Ruff. It’s Board members include former Secretary of State General and CFR member, Alexander Haig (deceased); former publisher of Forbes magazine, Jeff Cunningham; financial consultant, Alvin Hirsch; and a former executive of IBM Corporation, Robert Lohman.

In addition to the web site, the company publishes a monthly magazine, also called Newsmax. Newsmax is a competitor to WND and WJC, and was also heavily funded by Dick Scaife. Ruddy is the President, but Scaife owns 7.2% of the magazine.

In 1954, William J. Baroody, Sr., became executive vice president of the association and changed its name to AEI. The institute is often cited as a right-leaning counterpart to the left-leaningBrookings Institution. However, the two entities have often collaborated: from 1998 to 2008, they co-sponsored the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies (now housed solely at AEI), and in 2006, they launched the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.Socrawling in bed with the enemy is obviously not a problem for AEI. AEI is the most prominent think tank associated with American neoconservatism, in both the domestic and international policy arenas. Former Trotskyite and neo-conservative, Irving Kristol, widely considered a father of neo-conservatism with William F. Buckley, was a senior fellow at AEI (arriving from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, following the widespread revelation of the group’s CIA funding – Link). Many prominent neoconservatives—including Democrat CFR/TC/UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Democrat Ben Wattenberg, and Democrat,Joshua Muravchik. Muravchik was National Chairman of the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL) from 1968 to 1973, and supported the majority of the Socialist Party of America in renaming the organization to Social Democrats, USA. These people spent the bulk of their careers at AEI.

Then there’s the Peter G. Peterson Foundation who gave a grant to AEI. And just who is Peterson? He’s the chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and founder and chairman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. He was also the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York between 2000 and 2004. Remember too, Peterson is a partner with the Scaife funded Club for Growth.

In an editorial in Newsweek, Pete Peterson describes his inspiration for starting the Foundation, and his goals:

“So I started looking at the lives of other billionaires. Almost all the ones I most admired were major philanthropists: Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg, George Soros, Eli Broad—each with a passion to do good, each getting so much pleasure from giving their money away. I decided that’s what I wanted to do. But to which worthy cause would I direct my money?”

Guess who else the Peter G. Peterson Foundation gave a grant to? None other than the Heritage Foundation. The Peterson Foundation provided grants to six leading think tanks in 2011 to develop comprehensive proposals to address the nation’s long-term fiscal challenges. Link

Also on the board of AEI is Raymond Gilmartin, retired chairman and CEO of Merck & Co. who was director during the Vioxx scandal and sat on the board of Microsoft as well. And don’t forget their infamous Gardasil vaccine.

Scaife has funded AEI since 1963. Unbelievably, in 1964. he escorted Barry Goldwater on the Scaife family airplane to the Bohemian Grove retreat, the boozy and confidential gathering of neo-conservative, mostly wealthy men. Link

Scaife also gave to GOPAC, the political fund that helped make third waver, Newt Gingrich speaker in 1994. Gingrich says Scaife’s money laid the basis for modern conservatism (read that neo-conservative corporate fascism). And his money still flows, but some of these stats are from the mid 90s:

To the Heritage Foundation alone, $23 million between 1985-2010.

$1.22 million to the American Enterprise Institute ($9 million).

$1.40 million to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

$325,000 to the Cato Institute.

$575,000 to the Citizens for a Sound Economy, among others

The Free Congress Foundation, which used to run a conservative cable channel, received $1.9 million from 1994 to 1996.

Accuracy in Media got $675,000.

Scaife gave nearly $13 million over the last 36 years to Pepperdine University alone. He also donated enormous sums to Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne, George Mason, John Hopkins, MIT, NYU, Rochester, Smith College, Southwest Missouri State, Stanford, Tufts, University of Chicago, U of Pittsburgh, U of South Carolina and U of Virginia. Most of these departments and chairs do not exist on scholarly merit or academic trends. Corporate America purchases them.

Later, he supported such varied conservative and libertarian organizations as:

Scaife has also been a major donor to abortion rights advocates, including Planned Parenthood, giving “millions” to the organization. His mother, Sarah Scaife used to have Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, over to her house for tea. Needless to say, both Scaife and his sister Cordelia heavily funded Planned Parenthood.

Scaife’s Death

Here is the May, 2014, transcript of Glenn Beck’s tribute to his friend, Richard Mellon Scaife. Beck had spoken to him on the phone and found out he had been diagnosed with untreatable cancer, so he went to spend some time with him.

With the huge amount of funds available to Richard Mellon Scaife, it is a shame he funded those who were in bed with the left, without doing the research necessary to know just exactly what his money was accomplishing, or maybe he did. As a strong believer in tax funding of Planned Parenthood, one could never call Scaife an old-right conservative like Barry Goldwater. The Charlotte Observer said in 2003 that Dick Scaife had contributed to Children Requiring a Caring Community (now Project Prevention), which pays people addicted to drugs to be sterilized or receive long-term contraception. Link Needless to say, Richard Mellon Scaife was not really a friend to old right conservatives.

The murder of 60 million innocent babies in their mothers’ wombs, and the euthanasia of our elderly in their last days, most certainly has lifted the blessing of God on America that existed for so many decades. Remember God’s instruction through Moses in Deuteronomy where He said, “Choose Life!” Neoconservative Scaife certainly didn’t heed this warning.